Here’s How to Get Started with Ask a Tech Teacher

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Hello! Ask a Tech Teacher is a group of tech ed professionals who work together to offer you tech tips, advice, pedagogic discussion, lesson plans, and anything else we can think of to help you integrate tech into your classroom. Our primary focus is to provide technology-in-education-related information for educators–teachers, administrators, homeschoolers, and parents.

Here’s how to get started on our blog (or click this link):

Read our varied columns

They include:

Tech tips
How-to’s–how to use web tools, software, hardware, more
Dear Otto–questions from educators on tech questions
Pedagogy that impacts tech in ed
Reviews of books, apps, web tools, websites, tech ed products used in your classroom
Subscriber Specials–monthly discounts (or FREE) on tech ed products
Humorous life of a tech teacher

Read Hall of Fame articles

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Tech Tip #40: Where Did Windows Explorer Go?

In these 169 tech-centric situations, you get an overview of pedagogy—the tech topics most important to your teaching—as well as practical strategies to address most classroom tech situations, how to scaffold these to learning, and where they provide the subtext to daily tech-infused education.

Today’s tip: Where did Windows Explorer go?

Category: PCs

Q: I can’t find Explorer. Where did it go?

A: Right click on the start button and select ‘File Explorer’.

If you’re looking for DOS, type ‘command prompt’ into the search field and it’ll pop up. I still miss DOS…

What’s your favorite tech tip in your classroom? Share it in the comments below.

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How to Teach Venn Diagrams to Elementary School Students

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Venn Diagrams are one of the most visual approaches to showing students the logical relationships between sets and connectivity of data. It uses overlapping circles to show the wholeness of data and then where they overlap other data sets. It’s easy to find templates for them–in MS Office, Google Apps, Canva, and more.

One of our Ask a Tech Teacher crew has organized the basics on how to teach Venn Diagrams to elementary-age students:

What is a Venn Diagram
How to make it digitally
How to make it clear to elementary students (get crafty)
How to use it to design games

How to Teach Venn Diagrams to Elementary School Students

Teaching children Venn diagrams is the beginning of teaching them how to sort and manage data, a skill that is becoming ever more useful in this technological era. However, finding a way to teach them that sticks is important – generic worksheets just won’t do! We’ve come up with a few ways you can teach elementary school students Venn diagrams that will make your lessons dynamic and fun.

https://pixabay.com/photos/school-draw-drawing-education-1974369/

What is a Venn Diagram?

It’s important to make sure you first understand what a Venn diagram is. A Venn diagram is a plot of overlapping circles that can display items via specific categories, as well as relationships. For example, you can have a Venn diagram representing blue eyes with one circle, and brown hair with another circle. Those with blue eyes but not brown hair will end up in only the segment for blue eyes; those with brown hair but not blue eyes will be placed only in the segment for brown hair. Those with blue eyes and brown hair will be placed in the segment created by the overlap of the two circles.

This is a fun concept to teach to children because it’s a visual method, so it isn’t difficult to find something both visual and interactive to make sure it’s memorable. Now for the methods!

Make it Digital

With technology becoming the main focus of life, especially for the younger generation, one of the best ways to connect and share ideas is through technology. This means using digital tools and accessing an online venn diagram can be incredibly helpful for many reasons. Firstly, it allows you to project what you’re describing on your smartboard or interactive whiteboard, allowing you to demonstrate to the class what you mean. It makes a good start!

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Teacher-Authors: What’s Happening on my Writer’s Blog

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A lot of teacher-authors read my WordDreams blog. In this monthly column, I share one of the most popular posts from the past month on my writer’s blog, WordDreams.

Tech Tips for Writers is an occasional post on overcoming Tech Dread. I’ll cover issues that friends, both real-time and virtual, have shared. Feel free to post a comment about a question you have. I’ll cover it in a future tip.

This tip is about visiting a website that gives you an error code similar to this:

You probably think the site isn’t working, but a lot of times, it’s a different easily solved problem that takes no time to do.

Look at the URL address (at the top of the webpage):

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HS Financial Training Classes

Such an important topic, especially as we see kids aren’t graduating with basic knowledge of budgeting, paying bills, and more. CNBC has a great article on one of their blogs on this subject you’ll appreciate:

High schools, scrambling to prep Gen Z for the real world, are teaching students to make and manage money

We at Ask a Tech Teacher have written often about financial literacy. Check out these articles:

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We Landed on the Moon July 20 1969

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On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong was the first man to place foot on the moon. Commemorate that this year with an exciting collection of websites and apps that take your students to the Moon. Here are some you’ll like:

Apollo 11: Countdown to Launch via Google Earth
Apollo 11 VR
Google Moon–see the Moon in 3D with your Google Earth app
How we are going to the Moon–video
JFK Challenge — takes kids to the Apollo 11
NASA Educator Guide to the Moon (for teachers)
Moon Phase Simulation Viewed from Earth and Space (interactive, elementary and middle school)—and associated Lesson Plan
Observing the Moon in the Sky (interactive, elementary)
Moonrise to Moonset (media gallery, elementary)

More on space

In Love with Space? Here are Great Websites to Take You There

10 Space Websites That Will Launch Your Class Study

Solar System Scope

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Tech Ed Resources for your Class–Digital Citizenship

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I get a lot of questions from readers about what tech ed resources I use in my classroom so I’m going to take a few days this summer to review them with you. Some are edited and/or written by members of the Ask a Tech Teacher crew. Others, by tech teachers who work with the same publisher I do. All of them, I’ve found well-suited to the task of scaling and differentiating tech skills for age groups, scaffolding learning year-to-year, taking into account the perspectives and norms of all stakeholders, with appropriate metrics to know learning is organic and granular.

Today: K-8 Digital Citizenship Curriculum

Overview

K-8 Digital Citizenship Curriculum—9 grade levels. 17 topics. 46 lessons. 46 projects. A year-long digital citizenship curriculum that covers everything you need to discuss on internet safety and efficiency, delivered in the time you have in the classroom.

Digital Citizenship–probably one of the most important topics students will learn between kindergarten and 8th and too often, teachers are thrown into it without a roadmap. This book is your guide to what children must know at what age to thrive in the community called the internet. It blends all pieces into a cohesive, effective student-directed cyber-learning experience that accomplishes ISTE’s general goals to:

Advocate and practice safe, legal, and responsible use of information and technology
Exhibit a positive attitude toward using technology that supports collaboration, learning, and productivity
Demonstrate personal responsibility for lifelong learning
Exhibit leadership for digital citizenship

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EdTech’s Top Blogs to Follow–Yep, We’re On It

EdTech Review’s EdTech Blogs You Must Follow is a comprehensive review of the top blogs that will keep you plugged into everything happening in the education technology world. Among their recommendations–